Guest Post: Occupy Wall Street is No Tea Party

The following article was sent to us by Debbie Dooley, National Coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots and Co-Organizer and Co-Founder of the Atlanta Tea Party.

Since the Occupy protests began on September 17th, many on the left and mainstream media jumped too quickly to claim that the Occupy movement was the left’s version of the tea party. This could not be further from the truth.

One only has to look no further than the beginning of both movements to see stark differences. The tea party movement was started on a conference call of 22 activists around the country inspired by Rick Santelli’s on-air speech on the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange. We were just everyday citizens concerned about the future and the threat to our liberties and economic prosperity. Despite claims, we were not supported by corporations-nor did we have money.

The tea party has specific goals and agenda. We want our elected officials to be fiscally responsible with our tax dollars and to stop the un-controlled spending. We also want to stop the ever- expanding Federal Government. We are very respectful of law enforcement and it is evident that we cherish the American flag as a symbol of our freedoms. The tea party movement is a law abiding, peaceful movement and is family oriented. You frequently see children attending our rallies. We would not tolerate someone defecating on the American flag or a police car. We show complete disdain for Communism and Socialism.

The Occupy movement is a different story. Adbusters, a Vancouver based anti-consumerist magazine, came up with the idea for Occupy Wall Street in a brainstorming session. They were inspired by the “Arab Spring” movement which toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Kallie Lasn, co-founder of Adbusters was recently quoted by Reuters as saying of the movement, “We were inspired by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt and we had this feeling that America was ripe for a Tahrir moment.” The protests that began on September 17th were triggered by an Adbusters poster and marketing campaign.

You see an abundance of Occupy activists wearing shirts promoting Communism and Socialism and a few activists have defecated on the American flag and a police car. Some activists openly engage in sex and show a defiance of law enforcement.

Occupy Wall Street activists are attempting to blame Wall Street and capitalism for this nation’s economic woes. Many tea party activists openly question if the Occupy movement is actually a re-election ploy of the Obama re-election campaign to deflect the blame for our troubled economy from the failed policies of the Obama Administration to Wall Street.

…….Judson Phillips, a Tennessee attorney and organizer of the convention, says the tea-party movement, disparate as it is, includes many people “who believe that Congress pays far too much attention to Wall Street and not enough attention to Main Street.” Tea-party rallies, he says, draw a lot of small businessmen and women frustrated at their own inability to get capital while big banks prosper, and thus inclined to think the deck is stacked against them.

Asked specifically about Wall Street bonuses, Mr. Phillips replies: “I think the reaction of most people in the tea-party movement is going to be this: If a company is doing well, they don’t have a problem with it. Most people in the tea-party movement are capitalists….If the company in question is one that received a government bailout — totally different story. Most people in the tea-party movement don’t believe in the concept of too big to fail.”

Right now, Mr. Phillips notes, Wall Street bonuses aren’t the top item in the broad tea-party tent. Most available oxygen is being sucked out by anger over health care. But talk of more economic-stimulus measures surely would revive anger over financial bailouts, he adds.

Indeed, anger over Wall Street bailouts was in many ways the spark that brought the tea-party movement to life. Joseph Farah, publisher of WorldNetDaily, a Web site popular among tea-party adherents, said the financial-industry rescue plan launched in the closing days of President George W. Bush’s term “got this ball rolling. That’s where the anger, where the frustration took root.”……..

You can dismiss it all you like, but OWS is, in some form or another, just like the Tea Party. As much as you’d not like to admit it, I’ve seen some “extremists” at your Tea Party rallies, who don’t represent the views of your organization just as I would assume some of the more…outwardly expressive OWSers don’t speak for the masses. One of the most dangerous things you can do is dismiss an entire movement or belief because a handful of the proponents of that belief are a little bit whacko.

I can say with absolute certainty that the Tea Party events in Eastman, Georgia, were all funded 100% by local residents including myself. There were no outside funds and no unspoken agendas. A lot of small businessmen contributed time, money and other resources they often could not afford to give to make the events successful.

My guess is that you have not personally participated in any Tea Party event planning or organization. If there was a legitimate connection between the Koch brothers and the Tea Party it would have been all over the MSM. They live for that bit of sleazy guilt-by-association, attack-the messenger-because-we-can’t-attack-the-message BS.

The connection of the original OWS and professional leftist organizers such as Lisa Fithian is much easier to show. The key word being “professional” and I don’t believe that she flew up from her home in Austin, Texas, and just happened to be at the “spontaneous” events in New York from the very beginning by accident or for free. Do you think it was some cosmic quirk or do you, instead, believe in reality?

John, we do oppose the Wall Street bailouts and huge bonuses but Wall Street was enabled by the government and in particular, the Obama Administration. W started down the path of big government and bailouts, but Obama escalated it big time. The TARP bailout was onlypart of the catalyst of the tea parties. We blamed the government for passing TARP and other bailouts. OWS plasses the blame solely on Wall Street..

Toxic, tea party activists would not hesitate to speak out against socialism, communism and defecation of the American flag and police cars. OW is silent on those issues and are complicit with their silence

I warned about the lending crisis and tax payers being on the hook while you and many others from both parties called me“chicken little” And now your group and OWS would let the economy burn rather than do a bailout how ironic. At the end of the day I do think Obama and Bush could of cut better deals, but any rational person knows without a bailout it would have been economic Armageddon.

As far as Medicare you guys both argue around the edges yet neither side wants to give on cuts to a program that pays 3 dollars out for every 1 dollar put in by tax payers. And the crazy part is you call the other side socialist.

As far as the war, foreign policy, social issues and war of drugs the Ron Paul side of your movement is on the same page as many in the OWS group.

In all due respect Debbie, the truth is you guys do have much in common. And on some issues I agree with the groups and some I do not. Putting talking points aside, I think both groups have many issues you guys could work together on. That is why a debate would be very interesting. Would it not be more constructive for the country to debate issues over pointing fingers at the fringe side of both groups?

My colleague Peter Wallsten reports that “President Obama and his team have decided to turn public anger at Wall Street into a central tenet of their reelection strategy.” That isn’t to say you’ll find the president in Zuccotti Park with a sign and a sleeping bag anytime soon. But if Occupy Wall Street began lending out its organizers — at least the ones that want to participate in the political system — as campaign strategists, I think it’s a good bet they would sound something like this: “12 months from now, as people make the decision about who to go vote for, the gut check is going to be about, ‘Who would make decisions more about helping my life than Wall Street?’ ”

But that’s no protester. That’s David Plouffe, the president’s primary political adviser. And he is, to some degree, trying to make a virtue out of necessity. In 2008, Obama had heavy support from Wall Street. In 2012, after the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation reform bill, he doesn’t. Instead, as the New York Times reported over the weekend, it’s Mitt Romney who has emerged as Wall Street’s darling: He’s raised $1.5 million from the industry, while Obama is stuck below $300,000. The change is perhaps starkest at Goldman Sachs, which gave Obama’s 2008 campaign more money than any other private employer in the country. So far, Romney has hauled in about $350,000 from the firm’s employees. Obama has gotten less than $50,000.

Obama has not been nearly as tough on Wall Street as Wall Street seems to think he’s been. The exception the finance industry taken to the applause lines in his occasional forays into populism and to a financial-regulation bill that works to contain blowups in their industry rather than fundamentally reshape it, is striking. But now that Wall Street has a new prince and Obama is a man in desperate search of a winning message, the president’s reelection team is finding a lot to like in the chord Occupy Wall Street has struck.

If small banks and small businessmen are squeezed, and if people can’t get a decent return on their savings, it’s due to efforts to control inflation – which efforts will ultimately fail due to excessive deficit spending. Thus, the need to control inflation is because of excessive government spending. Thus the main reason economic activity and employment has been slowed among the “99% little people” is due to politicians trying to placate and control their interest groups by spending. The problem is too much government, not too much capitalism.

“After a day of protest, Kimlee Davis sat down in her tent in Woodruff Park and, by the light of her laptop, started her anthropology homework.

Like many in this city of 40 to 50 tents pitched amid the skyscrapers of downtown Atlanta, the 25-year-old student at Georgia State University feels part of a globe-spanning movement for change: people speaking up against what they see as corporate greed and ruling elites who stifle democracy.”

She is the exact demographic I’d had pegged for the local movement: aging college student, with an unmarketable major (except to teach other Anthropology students), who doesn’t want to face the real world and getting a job.

How “greedy” and “stifling” of a country can it be where the taxpayers continue to subsidize a college education for 25-year-olds, with unmarketable degrees, instead of asking them to get jobs and be taxpayers themselves.

One could easily argue that investing further in her education, with a taxpayer funded state university, and presumably student loan guarantees, is not going to be the best use of other’s hard-earned money. But, this country and state continue to do so, because they are not greedy or stifling. As a matter of fact, the state is too generous with other people’s money. The only people who are greedy are 25-year old college students who expect the taxpayers to continue to pay for their education.

TCOT was used for us to organize in the beginning. Everyone was inspired by Sanetelli’s words and started making phone calls to organize a tea party. TCOT put the word out to different groups like Don’t Go, FreedomWorks and Smart Girl Politics that they were organizing a conference call to discuss having a tea party. Those groups got the word out to their members. Word spread like wildfire about the call, but many did not think it would amount to anything, so there were only 22 on that first call.. (Three were from Georgia-me, Jenny Beth Martin and Amy Kremer) It was something discussed on social media sites. We did not expect it would evolve like it has.

At our first Atlanta Tea Party held at the Georgia Capital on February 27, 2009, we did not even have a stage or sound sytem. We had zero money. We got Joel Aaron with WGKA involved and used their sound system and we spoke standing on the pedastal of one of the statues close to the Capital steps. (We could not speak from the steps). Rock 100 Regular Guys were involved as well. I got the permit for 50 people because we had a week to plan it and felt like we would be lucky to have 50 if the weather was pretty. We had 300 in the drenching rain.. We decided to plan another round on April 15th. We had to beg and plead for donations to help finance a stage and sound system. That is one reason I laughed when the left accused of us of being financed by corporate millionaires or the Koch brothers. Clearly, someone forgot to tell them they were supposed to be financing us….

They may not fund your particular “Tea Party group,” but you cannot deny that they’re funding like groups, and organizations that are intrinsically and inextricably tied to yours. There is not one single “Tea Party” or “Tea Party organization.”

Nice hit piece by professional Democratic political strategist Peter Fenn. Fenn’s bio brags that his company “has worked in over 300 campaigns, from presidential to mayoral, and has represented a number of Fortune 500 companies.” Gee, I wonder how much of his money came from rich liberals?

Fenn cries like a baby that wealthy conservatives are doing what rich Democrats have done for years. Did you notice that he wisely makes no allegations of illegalities or wrong-doing? He just uses charged language such as “tentacles” rather than “influence” and “funnel” instead of “donate” Pardon me if I’m less than empathetic.

Look Debbie. I understand that politically it is important for the Tea Party to differentiate itself from OWS.

But, a few points.

You (and other in the Tea Party movement) are attacking them using the same tactic (astroturfing) that the left used against you when the Tea Party emerged.

The fact is neither of the narratives of yours or their genesis is a “clean narrative” that either your opponents or your supporters want to portray.

And both have grown beyond what may or may not have initially caused the spark of creation. By the way, congratulations on the PAC. I see Martha Zoeller is crowing about it on Facebook.

The differences are obviously ideological (although that Venn diagram overlaps in quite a few places too) but you can’t really ignore the similarities. And people across the spectrum, not just “liberals” like me, are noticing.

But like I said. It’s politics. And one of the baselines of politics is defining differences, not similarities.

There’s a lot of truth in what you say. I would say that I think the difference is that the Tea Party has maintained its amateur status for its actual organizers. I don’t know of any Tea Party organizers who got paid to do any of the work. I don’t think that the OWS group in New York can say that with a straight face (e.g. Lisa Fithian and the union organizers). If I’m wrong, someone please correct me here.

YOU don’t know of any Te Part organizers who got paid, but you can’t really, as an adult believe that no one in any of the groups across this country is not getting paid for what they do. How the heck would they be able to draw in people like Sarah Palin? Corporations and people like the Koch Brothers are not going to just hand their money over to some nice retired woman who sits around her kitchen table talking about no more taxes.

Sarah Palin is not a Tea party organizer, if that’s what you meant. If you mean that because a lot of people were involved someone got paid, then that’s not even an argument.

Second, as an adult, your lack of logic is appalling: so, we’re like a really big country, right? And, uh, there were lots and lots of people, you know, involved in the Tea party, right? So, you can’t prove that nobody got paid nothin’, now can you? So somebody might have gotten paid and that’s a fact.

Can YOU show that any Tea Party organizers were paid to plan and organize events?

Frankly, I have read your comment multiple times and between the double negatives and the lack of structure, I can’t follow it to an actual conclusion.

as i stated in an earlier post, picking out the most extreme acts committed by people claiming to be part of ows is at the very least hypocritical considering how tp folks reacted when the msm did the same to tp gatherings.

it cannot be denied that there are strongs similarities between tp and ows which presents an opportunity for discussion (if not debate). to categorically dismiss ows based on the perverted actions of a few shows a complete lack of leadership by some who claim to lead tp.

It’s hysterical to me. Tea partiers, many of whom are truly in the top 10%, walk around with signs for 2 years saying I’m ready for a revolution. Then when they see who it would actually take to DO the revolution and what it might look like afterwards (socialism) they decide that maybe they’ll just fight over their marginal tax rate instead of asking for a full on revolution.

The ironic thing about the bailouts is that a stronger government would have demanded that companies like Goldman Sachs that caused the problem take a haircut rather than rely on the US Gov’t to backstop their losses. You guys need to take a step into reality and realize that had the gov’t just let the financial system collapse, Galt’s Gulch would not have replaced it – socialism would have. Doing the bailouts the way they were done was corporate cronyism, not capitalism, but you really need to stop pretending that if you got your way you’d be in some sort of Randian paradise by now.

this is what concerns me about the tp movement…fundraising has seemingly become the key component of any tp activity. i am not naive to the need for funding a cause, but when ‘leaders’ are skimming mid 6 figure salaries (tim phillips afp – $363,000 as an example), one has to question whether tp groups have lost their way. this is exacerbated when tp ‘leaders’ endorse candidates despite pledges early on to stay out of individual races.

the many tp groups have done a fantastic job of forcing congress to at least debate spending priorities. i hope they will take a moment to reflect on where it all started (no money, begging for stage contribution) before casting aspersions at other fledgling protest movements that might help grow the demand on congress to address our fiscal crisis.

Debbie,
Thanks for your info from the TP perspective. I think it is odd that the TP only goes after (and supports) Republican candidates. Why not go after all of our elected officials, regardless of party persuasion? Why not demand change across the board?

I really think the TP is a shill for big business. It wants deregulation and ‘small government’ so big business can continue with it’s environmental disasters like Exxon’s, BP’s, Enron’s, and financial disasters like Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch, AIG and unregulated derivatives shell games that are scamming middle class America from its investments, pensions and savings.
Why doesn’t the TP stand up for regulation of financial markets to protect the individual investor/account holders?

PS I’m not buying the Obama conspiracy, nor can I endorse the collective amnesia that tries to blame every collapse directly on Obama. As for bailouts, Bush’s bailouts remember did not have a required payback clause, he gave the money away without asking for payback.

Ah yes the superiority and self importance of the messengers over the importance of the message argument. That’s a loser.

Libya, Tunisia, Egypt…revolts over corruption, corporate favoritism over workers rights, poor economic conditions for the working class, high unemployment, totalitarian regimes with policies favoring themselves over small business people… and now moving more towards a democratic society and privatizing and liberalizing their economies…you want to be critical of that? Really???

Of course they want to be critical of it. This is a movement and ideology that thinks an equal amount of capital that comes from wealth is greater than that which comes from labor. They think people selling their labor to employers should be 100% grateful to the employer for “giving” them a job. Just listen to the conservative guys who call into sports radio during a labor dispute, they pretty much 100% think the employees should stop whining and just be glad to have an employer willing to pay them.

They don’t want government to get out of the way, they just want to make sure it oils the tracks for those with capital to have preferential treatment to those who just have labor to sell and invest. That’s the ironic thing about the author. Maybe the Koch brothers didn’t send you a check to rent picnic tables at your rally. But you’re still working for them.

I conducted a national poll where we asked half the respondents a very plain vanilla question about each movement – occupy wall st and the tea party. Didn’t describe what either group does, just asked whether you identify with it and consider yourself a member, aren’t a member but mostly agree, mostly disagree, don’t know enough about it or don’t know.

Occupy Wall Street had a larger percentage who don’t know enough about them to have an opinion – but both groups scored almost identically in consider yourself a member, agree with, and disagree with. Occupy Wall Street actually had a slightly more favorable overall view than the Tea Party – though it was within the margin of error.

It’s funny – OWS doesn’t seem to have a spelled out agenda – no one can really say exactly what they stand for or what their demands are. But it’s easy to understand what they are against – a government that benefits the wealthy and connected corporations without doing anything for those who aren’t. The tea party can tell you exactly what they’re for, but to a lot of people it doesn’t make any sense – you’re against these bailouts too, but you also don’t want the government to help hard working poor people acquire healthcare coverage. Throw in the fact that many people in your group are explicitly against government spending unless it benefits them directly (hands off my Medicare etc).

You’re trying to hypocritically re-fight a battle that was lost in 1932, 1965, 1981, 1986, 1993, 2008 and 2009. People rightly think government isn’t working for them anymore – but what OWS stands for that the tea party doesn’t is that instead of just throwing out the government with the bathwater they’d prefer it just start working with Americans again instead of ignoring them.

The legitimately super wealthy (people like the Koch Brothers) don’t want to pay for any government over the bare minimum (financial system and security) that protects their wealth. Paying for government is personally a net loss to them. For the rest of us, we just want to break even and maybe come out a bit ahead. If the tea party truly got it’s wish and we got rid of massive amounts of government including privitizing Social Security and scaling back Medicare, almost everyone in the country would be worse off – except for the Koch Brothers. Like I said, they may have not sent you a check for your rally, but that’s why America thinks you’re working for them.

Some of those Time questions were pretty straightforward (despite Debbie’s and the Washington Examiners attempt to deflect):

Q8. ON ANOTHER ISSUE, IS YOUR OPINION OF THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT VERY FAVORABLE, SOMEWHAT FAVORABLE, SOMEWHAT UNFAVORABLE, VERY UNFAVORABLE, OR DON’T YOU KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT THE TEA PARTY TO HAVE AN OPINION?

What they’re ultimately freaking out about is that someone will channel bailout anger and frustration away from Galt’s Gulch and towards something more like a new new deal. Which is the direction America typically ends up moving in anyway.

There is one key difference: when the Tea Party hit its peak, the Democrats were exclusively in charge. It gave them a target to speak out against. That’s not quite the same situation with the Occupy crowd and Obama. Obama is in the supreme position of power, so, after 3 years as President, if he’s not careful, as he tries to cozy-up with the Occupy crowd, his “let’s get the political establishment” rhetoric is liable to boomerang back at him.

Sorry, but this makes it appear as if the TEA Party was merely a partisan reaction to the election of a Democratic president. That might have been what the TEA Party was about for some people originally, and it also might have been what it morphed into later, but that wasn’t what it was about initially. I followed the TEA Party from the beginning, and the blatant partisan stuff didn’t begin until months, even years later after the stimulus spending and ObamaCare. Until then, they honestly were reacting to the criminal behavior of the banks and the financial sector, and the cozy relationship that the crooks had with Washington (on both sides of the aisle, i.e. under Bush).

PS: I admit I’m impressed at the rational and level headed responses in this thread. I am going to have to reconsider my stereotypes of the rational minds that populate PP, especially since *cough* Icarus took over.

And on this, we agree. Occupy Wall Street is no Tea Party! We are not bought and sold by the Koch Brothers, Moral Majority, RNC, NRSC, NRCC, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Redstate, Club for Growth, or any others of the like! We are free, independent minded thinkers, not bought and sold by any corrupt entity, trying to change our world by leveling the playing field and making millionaires and billionaires pay their just sums.

Not ignoring that (cap gains staying at 15% is iffy right now and payroll tax cap gets bumped up occasionally), but the income tax levied on high income earners(as opposed to those with accumulated wealth) is far more onerous and disproportional on the person making $628,394 per year than the person making $38,000 per year.

Who do you think those 47% are? The fact is that the vast majority of them are families with incomes in the $20-30,000 range. So they are not lazy freeloaders sponging off the system. They are working, they are just working crappy jobs and trying to support a couple of kids. Do you really want to screw with them some more? Isn’t the moral thing to first address the 7000 millionaires who don’t pay federal taxes? And then the half-million who made over $100,000 and also didn’t pay any federal taxes? THEN maybe we should look at the mechanics and laborers making $25,000 and see if we can squeeze a couple of more bucks out of them.

TARP was needed to keep the banking dominos from going down on a run and no sane person wanted a hard landing. The big bad boys on Wall Street over leveraged, took extraordinary risks, developed bizarre financial instruments for easy money, paid themselves insane bonuses and the average joe fell for it, leveraging his family thru his own roof. They were and are trying to build a financial oligarchy not a capitalist system.

Then in the no crisis should go to waste move, trillions were wasted in non-productive efforts as Federal jobs & payrolls, welfare payments, war/foreign expenditures and government fraud exploded.

The tea party cries for deregulation/less gov’t and the ows cries for more regulation/ more gov’t when better regulation and balancing the books is needed.

Social Security is a (looted) gov’t run employee/employer paid insurance program not an entitlement. Those that participated should expect our funds invested in treasuries to more than pay for the benefits. The fastest growing portion is disability. Raising the age of eligibility should not be a big deal.

Medicare is a gov’t program that eliminated primary health care private programs. It is rift with fraud. There are no other choices other than to manage it properly or raise social security payments in amount that will allow participants to go purchase same coverage in the market.
Betcha if the latter came into play, we let folks make their own choices of coverages and the market have at it, fairly, costs would drop like a stone.

The nanny government is unaffordable and poorly regulated markets distructively widen the have/have not gap.

“TARP was needed to keep the banking dominos from going down on a run and no sane person wanted a hard landing. The big bad boys on Wall Street over leveraged, took extraordinary risks, developed bizarre financial instruments for easy money, paid themselves insane bonuses and the average joe fell for it, leveraging his family thru his own roof. They were and are trying to build a financial oligarchy not a capitalist system.”

Yeah, that is what both OWN and the ORIGINAL Tea Party believed. The TEA Party that became a co-opted, infiltrated, bought and paid for wing of the GOP is now utterly convinced that Barack Obama Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Frank Raines, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and ACORN caused the financial crisis, or at least 95% of it.

“Yeah, that is what both OWN and the ORIGINAL Tea Party believed.”
[It was 95% the government’s doing.]

Maybe what they believe but not what my post says.
Barney & friends certainly played a role unleashing the purse strings…..but all checks and balances went out when wall street heads rushed through the open door….